


Waiting for You

by ninaswritings



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Drabble, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 13:38:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18779371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninaswritings/pseuds/ninaswritings
Summary: What happens when Orpheus comes up above alone? A Hadestown drabble about a boy who waits.





	Waiting for You

           There is a railroad station, above ground. At that station, a boy waits on a train. When it comes, he watches the doors open. Others get on; he never does.

           Sometimes a woman will exit. She wears a green dress and carries a woven basket. Over the years, she changes. Not in the way the boy does though; she doesn’t age.  
           She comes once a year in a green dress with a woven basket. She stays for a couple of months every time, and then leaves for the next. Sometimes she arrives early, sometimes she stays a bit longer and sometimes she comes late, but she always comes, and always goes.  
           Every time she comes, she sees the boy on the platform. She smiles at him. In the beginning, he would go with her. He would drink what she offered him, and he would play for her because she likes his singing. Once in a while he would ask her about down below. She would offer him a kind but sad smile. “It’s alright.” But he doesn’t go with her anymore. He just waits on the train.

           Sometimes a man with feathers on his feet sits down next to him, and they discuss life for a while. Is he still performing? Crowds aren’t gathering around him anymore, not like they used to. He still carries his lyre, but it hasn’t seen the sun in ages.  
           “Are you still working on your song?”  
           The boy nods. “It isn’t finished though.”  
           “Do you want to play it?”  
           The boy shakes his head. “It isn’t finished yet.”  


           Once upon a time he sang a song to a girl, and she wasn’t around anymore. The last thing she had asked him was to wait for her, and so he does on that platform for the train. The boy waits waits until he is a man. He waits until his hair has greyed, and his voice is too tired and fragile to sing. He waits until his hands are frozen and he can’t strum the strings in his lyre anymore. He waits and watches as the crowds only gather around him to step on the train, full of people younger than he is.

           The man with feathers hadn’t come in years, but one day he’s back, standing in front of the boy who is now an old man.  
           “Orpheus,” the man calls his name. Orpheus, once young and volatile, now old and fragile, looks up.  
           “Are you ready?” Hermes asked him. The god now looked younger than Orpheus, but still he looked at the man as if Orpheus was still his son. The train doors opened before him, revealing an empty car. “She’s waiting for you.”


End file.
